The Daily Stoic - BONUS: How Abraham Lincoln Proved The Obstacle Is the Way

Episode Date: February 17, 2025

This President’s Day, learn how Abraham Lincoln turned every challenge into an opportunity to grow. From personal loss to political failure, each setback made him wiser, tougher, and more empathetic leader. 🎥 Watch 5 Parenting Lessons From Abraham Lincoln on the Daily Dad YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtw5SjfMyfw📕 Pick up a copy of the 10th Anniversary Edition of The Obstacle Is the Way by Ryan Holiday at dailystoic.com/obstacle🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast🎥 Watch top moments from The Daily Stoic Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dailystoicpodcast✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us:  Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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And I've been doing it now, crazy me, at least 15 years I've been staying in Airbnbs, basically since it came out. I love Airbnb and you should check it out for your next trip. Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a stoic-inspired meditation designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women to help you learn from them, to follow in their example and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom.

For more, visit DailyStoic.com. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. We're not really another episode. I guess this is a bonus episode. It's a special one. It's President's Day. Somebody asked me the other day if I'd read any good books on Lincoln

that I might recommend. And I was like, yeah, I got a couple. I took a picture. You can see it on Instagram. Let's see how many books are in this stack. We got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six,

twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three, thirty-four. 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34. It's probably 10,000 pages, something like that. My wife just commented, are you okay? And I said, what do you mean? She was like, that is an unhealthy amount of books to read about Lincoln. But I mean, look, this has been over a long period of time. And I know that my understanding and evolution

of Lincoln has evolved because, so I just did the 10 year anniversary of The Obstacle is the Way. And part three of The Obstacle is the Way is about Lincoln. And he's actually also the part three character in the wisdom book, which title has not been announced, but I'm just finishing now. I was updating part three

of Obstacle right as I was beginning to start this new section on Lincoln. So I thought, okay, I'm going to edit all this. This will be an easy part of the new book because I've read so much about Lincoln. And I immediately realized that I had not read nearly enough about Lincoln, did another deep dive, probably read another two or three thousand pages. Every time I finish a book about Lincoln, I think, I'm so glad I did this. I learned more about him. I learned more about America. I learned more about humanity.

I learned more about leadership. And so the last year has been sort of a deep dive and a re deep dive into Lincoln for me. I even just read this. Gary Wills, who's a biographer I love, has a 350 page book just on the Gettysburg address. There are more pages in this book than words in the Gettysburg address, but every page of it was incredible. So I'm a lifelong student of Lincoln, but in today's episode, I wanted to bring you a deep dive in sort of a stoic interpretation of Lincoln as a person who'd been knocked around by life.

You know, Lincoln and Marcus Aurelius' trajectories are interesting. I don't think they ever expected to be president or head of state. I don't think it was necessarily a lifelong ambition. Life was not kind to them. Their disposition was not necessarily the extroverted gregarious, fun-loving, sort of political glad-hander type that we tend to think of in modern politicians. These were introverted, private,

some might say depressive or melancholic individuals. That's what I talked a lot about in The Obstacles Away. I was very influenced by this great book called Lincoln's Melancholy. Anyways, if you've read The Obstacles Away, listen to this because this is what's in the new edition. This is the extended meditation on Lincoln. And I just thought it was fitting today on President's Day. Lincoln's birthday

is this month. And as America feels more divided than ever, as we need someone to solve vexing, complicated, long, deferred problems. I think there is a lot we can learn from Lincoln. And also, if you are a parent over on the Daily Dad YouTube channel, we just did a video on five parenting lessons from Lincoln, which we just recorded. So I'll link to that in today's show notes. But in the meantime, here is Lincoln, the power of will, and how a great man turned the great obstacles of his life into the fuel and the wisdom that made him a great leader. You can grab the 10th anniversary edition of The Obstacles of Way anywhere, books are

sold, we've got signed copies in the painted porch. I'll link to it in today's show notes. The Discipline of the Will. Because he has become more myth than man, most people are unaware that Abraham Lincoln battled crippling depression his entire life. Known at the time as melancholy, his depression was often debilitating and profound, nearly driving him to suicide on two separate occasions. His penchant for jokes and bawdy humor, which we find more pleasant to remember him for, was, in many ways, the opposite of

what life must have seemed like to him during his darker moments. Though he could be light and joyous, Lincoln suffered periods of intense brooding, isolation, and pain. Inside, he struggled to manage a heavy burden that often felt impossible to lift. Lincoln's life was defined by enduring and transcending great difficulty. Growing up in rural poverty, losing his mother while he was still a child, educating himself, teaching himself the law,

losing the woman he loved as a young man, practicing law in a small country town, experiencing multiple defeats at the ballot box as he made his way through politics, and of course the bouts of depression, which at the time were not understood or appreciated as a medical condition. All of these were impediments that Lincoln reduced with a kind of prodding, gracious ambition and smiling, tender endurance. Lincoln's personal challenges had been so intense that he came to believe that they were destined for him in some way, and that the Depression, especially, was a unique experience that prepared him for greater things.

He learned to endure all this, articulate it, find benefit and meaning from it. Understanding this is the key to understanding the man's greatness. For most of Lincoln's political career, slavery was a dark cloud that hung over our entire nation, a cloud that could and had to lift. Some ran from it, others resigned themselves to it, or became apologists. Most assumed it meant the permanent breakup of the Union, or worse, the end of the world as they knew it.

It came to be that every quality produced by Lincoln's personal journey was exactly what was required to lead the nation through its own journey and trial. Unlike other politicians, he was not tempted to lose himself in petty conflict and distractions. He could not be sanguine. He could not find it in his heart to hate like others would. His own experience with suffering drove his compassion to allay it in others. He was patient because he knew that difficult things took time. Above all, he found purpose and relief in a cause bigger than himself and his personal struggles.

The nation called for a leader of magnanimity and force of purpose. It found one in Lincoln, a political novice who was nevertheless a seasoned expert on matters of will and patience. These attributes were born of his own severe experience, as he often called it, and the characteristics were representative of a singular ability to lead the nation through one of its most difficult and painful trials, the Civil War. As crafty and ambitious and smart as he was, Lincoln's real strength was his will. The way that he was able to resign himself to an onerous task without giving into hopelessness. The way he could contain both humor and deadly seriousness.

The way he could use his own private turmoil to teach and help others. The way he was able to rise above the din and see politics philosophically. This, too, shall pass, was Lincoln's favorite saying, one he'd once said was applicable in any and every situation. To live with his depression, Lincoln had developed a strong inner fortress that girded him, and in 1861 it again gave him what he needed in order to endure and struggle through a war that was about to begin. Over four years, the war was to become

nearly incomprehensibly violent. And Lincoln, who'd found it hard at first to avoid, would fight to win justly, and finally to end it with malice towards none. Admiral David Porter, who was with Lincoln in his last days, described it as though Lincoln seemed to think only that he had an unpleasant duty to perform, and set himself to perform it as smoothly as possible.

We should count ourselves lucky to never experience such a trial or be required, as Lincoln had been, to hold and be able to draw from our own personal woe in order to surmount it. But we certainly can and must learn from his poise and courage. Clearheadedness and action are not always enough in politics or in life. Some obstacles are beyond a snap of the fingers or a novel solution. It is not always possible for one man to rid the world of a great evil or stop a country bent towards conflict. Of course, we try, because it can happen. But we should be

ready for it not to, and we need to be able to find a greater purpose in this suffering and handle it with firmness and forbearance. This was Lincoln, always ready with a new idea or an innovative approach, whether it was sending a supply boat instead of reinforcements to the troops besieged at Fort Sumter, or timing the Emancipation Proclamation with a Union victory at Antietam to give it the appearance of strength, but equally prepared for the worst, and then prepared to make the best of the worst. Leadership requires determination and energy, and certain situations, at times, call on

leaders to marshal that determined energy simply to endure, to provide strength in terrible times. Because of what Lincoln had gone through, because of what he'd struggled with and learned to cope with in his own life, he was able to lead, to hold a nation, a cause, an effort together. This is the avenue for the final discipline, the will. If perception and action were the disciplines of the mind and the body, then the will is the discipline of the heart and the soul.

The will is the one thing we control, completely, always. Whereas I can try to mitigate harmful perceptions and give 100% of my energy to actions, those attempts can be thwarted or inhibited. My will is different because it is within me. Will is fortitude and wisdom, not just about specific obstacles, but about life itself and where the obstacles we are facing fit within it. It gives us ultimate strength, as in the strength to endure, contextualize, and derive meaning from the obstacles we cannot simply overcome, which, as it happens, is a way of flipping

the unflippable. Even in his own time, Lincoln's contemporaries marveled at the calmness, the gravity, and the compassion of the man. Today, those qualities seem almost godly, almost superhuman. His sense of what needed to be done set him apart, as though he was above or beyond the bitter divisions that weighed everyone else down, as though he was from another planet. In a way, he was, or at least, he had traveled from somewhere very far away, somewhere deep inside himself, from where others hadn't.

Schooled in suffering, to quote Virgil, Lincoln learned to comfort those who suffer too. This too is part of the will, to think of others, to make the best of a terrible situation that we tried to prevent but could not, to deal with fate with cheerfulness and compassion. Lincoln's words went to people's hearts because they came from his, because he had an access to part of the human experience that many had walled themselves off from. His personal pain was an advantage. Lincoln was strong and decisive as a leader, but he also embodied the Stoic maxim, Sistine et abstine, bear and forbear. Acknowledge the pain, but trot onward in your task.

Had the war gone on even longer, Lincoln would have led his people through it. Had the Union cause lost the Civil War, he'd have known that he'd done everything he could in pursuit of victory. More important, had Lincoln been defeated, he was prepared to bear whatever the resulting consequences with dignity and strength and courage. Providing an example for others in victory or in defeat, whatever occurred. With all our modern technologies come the conceited delusion that we control the world around us.

We are convinced that we can now, finally, control the uncontrollable. Of course that is not true. It is highly unlikely we will ever get rid of all the unpleasant and unpredictable parts of life. One needs only to look at history to see how random and vicious and awful the world can be. The incomprehensible happens all the time. Certain things in life will cut you open like a knife.

When that happens, at that exposing moment, the world gets a glimpse of what's truly inside you. So what will be revealed when you're sliced open by tension and pressure? Iron or air or bullshit? As such, the will is the critical third discipline. We can think and act and finally adjust to a world that is inherently unpredictable. The will is what prepares us for this, protects us against it, and allows us to thrive and be happy in

spite of it. It is also the most difficult of all the disciplines. It's what allows us to stand undisturbed while others wilt and give in to disorder. Confident, calm, ready to work regardless of the conditions. Willing and able to continue, even during the unthinkable, even when our worst nightmares have come true. It's much easier to control our perceptions and emotions than it is to give up our desire to control other people and events.

It's easier to persist in our efforts and our actions than to endure the uncomfortable or the painful. It's easier to think and act than it is to practice wisdom. These lessons come harder, but are in the end the most critical to wrestling advantage from adversity. In every situation, we can always prepare ourselves for more difficult times. Always accept what we are unable to change. Always manage our expectations, always persevere, always learn to love our fate and what happens to us, always protect our inner self, retreat into ourselves, always submit to a greater, larger cause, always remind ourselves of our own mortality, and

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